Opium (9 page)

Ky again allowed his eyes to travel over her body. This time they lingered. “Just how badly do you want to see this man again, Mademoiselle Bonaventure? Because I will tell you this, nobody survives five years in that place. Jungle rot gets them, and Westerners are very prone to disease. And there are a lot of knife fights. I am surprised he has lasted this long. He must be very tough.”

“Name your price,” she said.

***

Chevrons of yellow sunlight angled through the dusty bamboo blinds. The fan rumbled overhead, she heard the clatter of mah jong tiles from the next room, the cry of the hawkers from the street outside. There was a strong taint of incense and anise and ginger.

Noelle hugged her arms to her breasts. What if her father was right? What if Baptiste Crocé turned out to be a waster and a drinker and a womaniser?

To hell with it.

I love him. I've come this far. There's no going back now.

***

Colonel Ky picked up the hard-backed chair next to the ancient armoire and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. He would have liked to have taken her to a better hotel than the Trung Mai. But what could he do? If he tried to sneak into the Continental it would be all over the city by morning. If his wife found out he had been with a western woman she would cut it off with scissors and if Rocco knew ... well, that would be even worse.

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

Noelle pulled her dress over her head. Her body was oily slick with sweat, and gleamed like burnished bronze. She stripped off her underwear and stood in front of him, naked, except for a few bands of gold at her wrist and her throat, and her Cartier wrist-watch.

Ky's mouth was dry, he couldn't swallow. “Lie on the bed,” he said.

He smiled to himself. What was it the French believed in?
Liberté, egalité, fraternité.
Liberty, equality, brotherhood. Well, what could be more equal and brotherly than a cultured Vietnamese gentleman like himself taking liberties with a beautiful French girl?

He sat next to her on the edge of the bed. “Put your hands above your head,” he said.

Noelle hesitated then obeyed. Ky ran his hand over her body, from her shoulder to her thigh. His hand came away oily with the damp-warm of her perspiration. It was hard to breathe.

He would be gentle with her, of course. Perhaps she thought that because he was a soldier he had no sensitivity, no skill. But his father had been a highly respected businessman in Dalat, his mother educated in France. How the world turns.

He took off his clothes and got into bed. Some of his own family despised him for the choices he had made in his career, but if they could see him now they would realise that public office had many more compensations than they had ever realised.

Chapter 13

A
CROWD had gathered around the charred corpse lying in the middle of the street. The smell of burned flesh hung in the air, a sweet and nauseating stench that wrinkled Baptiste's nostrils. A journalist was taking pictures. Saffron robed monks stood to one side, their faces unreadable.

“What's going on?' Baptiste said.

“A monk barbecue,” Ky said as they drove past.

“Why?'

“The Buddhists are making trouble for President Diem. They are protesting government policies by setting light to themselves.” Ky giggled. “It is very obliging of them. Why should we get rid of them while they do it for us?'

“They do it to themselves?' Baptiste could not imagine the balls it would take to do such a thing.

“Difficult job being a monk. You burn out very young.” Ky giggled again.

They were in the back of a green M.S.S. jeep. It had all happened so quickly. This morning two guards had dragged him out of the prison while he was barely awake. He was convinced they were taking him out to shoot him. Instead they threw him in the jeep with this Vietnamese Colonel. Baptiste had recognised from the day of his arrest at Ban Me Thuot.

Colonel Ky turned his head and hawked into the street. “Very sorry, but I don't know which smells worse. You, or that monk.”

“D
esolé
, Colonel. Normally I bathe in asses' milk, but your boys interrupted my toilet this morning.”

Ky prodded him with his swagger stick. “Sit a little further over that way.”

“May I ask where we're going?'

Ky ignored him. “I hope you have learned your lesson, Monsieur Crocé.”

“I learned a big lesson. Next time I won't get caught.”

“Next time you don't come back to Vietnam again. Ever.”

They left Saigon and crossed into Cholon. The streets became narrower and life moved from the offices and the shop houses out into the streets. Baptiste smelled the sacks of dried fish down at the wharves. The streets clamoured with the squawking of ducks at the open air markets and the din of motorcycles and
cyclo
bells.

“Where are you taking me?'

Ky ignored him. He pointed to the red, white and blue bumper sticker on the big-finned Cadillac in front of them. “So many Americans coming here now, Mister Crocé. I think I liked it better in the old days, liked the French much better. I like their women. You like women, Mister Crocé?'

“What do you think?'

Ky laughed, a brittle sound, like a bark. “Of course. It must be very hard for a man like you, in prison all this time.” A Vietnamese girl cycled past in a beautiful
ao dai
, a long mauve smock, split to the thigh, over ankle length diaphanous silk trousers. “So beautiful, yes? Beauty is a question of balance, isn't it, Monsieur Crocé? I can talk to you about this, I think, because you are a connoisseur of such things, just like me.”

Baptiste did not think this was a philosophical discussion. He wondered where this was leading.

“Yes, a question of balance. Nothing too big, nothing too small. The eyes, the lips, the nose, the breasts. They say breasts should not be too big, same as rice bowl. Bigger and it is all wasted, smaller and not enough to weigh in the hand.” A beat, and then: “Like Noelle. Everything is perfect. In balance.”

Noelle.

So, she had come through for him. She had bought him his freedom, and now he knew the price.

They had stopped outside a Chinese hotel. The lobby was open to the street. A man in brown peasant pyjamas came out and hawked into the gutter.

Ky reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and handed Baptiste his passport. “Well, goodbye, Mister Crocé.”

“I can go?'

“Of course.” As Baptiste‚ got out, Ky leaned forward and whispered. “She is waiting for you, inside. Room 23. If she is wet, it is not because she is happy to see you. It is because I have only just left her!'

Ky tapped the driver on the shoulder with his swagger stick and the jeep lurched away into the noonday traffic.

***

The door was not locked.

As he went in, he saw his own reflection in the cracked mirror of an ancient dressing table. He looked gaunt and desperate. The shades were down and the room was in semi-darkness. The room was bare, just an armoire and a native wooden platform bed covered with a thick cotton pad.

Then he saw her silhouette, by the window.

“Noelle.”

She came towards him and put her arms around him. “Baptiste. Oh my God. You're so thin.”

“I'm all right.”

“I thought I'd never see you again.” She reached up and brushed the hair out of his eyes.
“Mon pauvre.”

He looked down at his clothes, they were encrusted with dirt. “I need a bath.”

She nodded and led him through to a cool, white tiled washroom. Pale chinchook lizards chirruped high on the walls. There was a water jar in one corner, almost as high as his waist, with a long handled dipper resting on its edge.

She unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off him, then unfastened the cracked leather belt and let the rest of his clothes drop onto the wet, stained tiles. She scooped up some of the cold water with the dipper and poured it over his head. Baptiste leaned back against the wall and gasped with pleasure.

Noelle worked soap into a rich lather in her hands and started to soap down his body. Her hands were warm, and the tiles on his back were cold.

“He has missed me,” she whispered.

“Please,” he murmured. Her fingers encircled him. He gasped aloud, every nerve jangling and raw. He pulled her towards him, pulled up the simple cotton shift she was wearing. She was naked underneath. He gripped the cheeks of her bottom and lifted her easily. He was panting, like a runner. “Noelle ...”

“Go on,” she whispered.

The world had narrowed into one single uncontrollable and desperate need. He pressed her against the wall, and he forced his way inside her. Almost as quickly it was over.

The pounding of blood in his ears softened, the jackhammer of his heart slowed. As the world returned, he was aware of her trembling, her arms curled around his neck. She was crying.

“It's all right,” he whispered.

“Baptiste, I would do anything for you.”

But you hardly know anything about me, he thought. Maybe you are just in love with me because I am the kind of man your father hates. Maybe you are in love with me because I am crazy and I fly planes and I break the law. You are in love with the man who took your virginity in a crumbling temple ruin.

You should not have done all this for a man you don't know.

Now what am I going to do? You stole me out of prison and now I am trapped.

For the first time in his life Baptiste Crocé wondered if it was possible for him to love someone beside himself.

***

They lay on the bed, their limbs intertwined. Her head was on his chest, listening to the pounding rhythms of his heart. Should I feel ashamed or proud? she thought. I have run away from my father, bought my lover out of prison, been used by one man, loved by another. All of this in the space of one day; am I a whore or a heroine?

“Did they hurt you?' she whispered.

Baptiste reached for the Gitanes beside the bed and lit one. “I couldn't smoke a cigarette whenever I wanted to. Wasn't that torture enough?'

“You're thinner.”

“All they ever fed us was rice and now and then they slopped some sort of meat on top. Funnily enough it was always the day after one of the inmates died.”

She thought he was serious but when she looked up he was grinning at her. She slapped him. “Don't joke about it.”

“Why not? Everything's funny once it's over.”

She wondered if he knew about her bargain with Colonel Ky. That was over, and that still wasn't funny. “Don't you want to know how I got you out?'

“The colonel said you bribed him.”

“Yes, a bribe,” she said. She ran her fingers through the short, dark curls on his chest. “I dreamed about you every night for the last seventeen months.”

He kissed her again, her eyes, her face, her lips, her shoulders, her throat. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head down to her breasts. There was not time enough in the rest of her life to drink her fill of him.

Chapter 14

K
EROSENE lamps glowed from the hawker's stalls in the side streets. On the Tu Do, the East and the West met without touching; a noodle seller fanned a charcoal stove at the roadside, surrounded by his Vietnamese customers; behind him, sprawled on bentwood chairs in front of the cafés, Corsicans of the
milieu
drank
pastis
and played dice, and laughing American engineers drank cognac and sodas.

The bells in the basilica summoned the faithful to Mass.

Noelle and Baptiste found a table at the Café Verlain and ordered Pernods. He lit a Gitanes.

“You smoke too much, Baptiste.”

“I can't help it. I'm addicted. Like I'm addicted to you.” He grinned and kissed her on the neck. Two Americans in loud shirts looked over, their faces were hard with envy.

“I can't keep up with you,” she said.

He slouched in his chair, saw the Americans staring. He winked at them, and they turned away, scowling.

So handsome, she thought. A smile that could melt butter, eyes like a Gypsy, a face like the devil. She could hear her father's voice:
I hope you know what you're doing, Noelle
.

She could not believe they had only been together again for a few hours. It could have been a lifetime. They had made love all afternoon; then, while he slept, she had bought him new clothes from the Indian tailor on the street corner - a white linen suit, a navy blue silk shirt, and a broad black leather belt.